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Pakistani gunmen kill vaccine workers

Jason Burke New Delhi

FIVE female health workers vaccinating children against polio have been shot dead in Pakistan in a series of attacks blamed on Islamist militants. Three of the victims were teenagers.

The deaths caused the Pakistani government to suspend vaccinations in two cities and dealt a fresh setback to an eradication campaign dogged by Taliban resistance in a country that is one of the disease's last global strongholds.

Four of the killings, which officials said were carried out by masked men on motorbikes, took place in Karachi on the second day of a drive to eradicate the disease from the country.

The fifth, of a 17-year-old schoolgirl administering the program with her sister, occurred in the violent western city of Peshawar.

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Two male health workers were also injured by gunfire, officials said.

It was not clear who was behind the shootings but Taliban insurgents have repeatedly denounced the anti-polio campaign as a Western plot.

''Operations will be reviewed - and suspended where necessary,'' said Michael Coleman, a spokesman for the United Nations children's fund, UNICEF. ''We're concerned for the safety of front-line workers. They are the true heroes.''

Thousands of volunteers were taking part in a three-day government-led drive, supported by the World Health Organisation and UNICEF, to vaccinate tens of millions of children at risk from polio.

After a decades-long struggle the disease is now endemic in only three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Relatives said several of the victims had received death threats in recent days.

Some Islamists and Muslim preachers in Pakistan and elsewhere say the polio vaccine is a Western plot to sterilise Muslims, to stop population growth.

Other religious leaders have taken part in campaigns aimed at debunking that myth.

Resistance is particularly strong in Pakistan, where there has been a severe backlash against immunisation for polio and other diseases since the CIA used a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi, to set up a fake vaccination program as the agency closed in on the al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in his hiding place in Abbottabad last year.

Women and girls are frequent targets of militants. A veteran Swedish worker for a non-governmental organisation that trained midwives was killed recently in the eastern city of Lahore.

Officials said the girl killed in Peshawar had received repeated threats that had forced her to move between houses of friends and relatives at least three times in recent days.

Statistics released in October showed an improvement in the polio situation in Pakistan, with 47 children paralysed by the disease compared with 154 cases in 2011.

However, in 2005 only 28 new cases were registered.

In neighbouring India, a mass vaccination campaign reduced cases from 741 in 2009 to a single case last year. A key factor was the support for the campaign by clerics from poor Muslim communities.